Just like he used to
by Alalaes
Summary: Sakura sees a ghost and finds 'moving on' is about as easy as drawing blood from a stone. (Ninja-verse, AU, Written for the 2016 KakaSaku Last Fan Standing contest)


-OOO-

 _Sakura wakes with a start, her arm half-outstretched onto Kakashi's side of the bed._

 _Immediately she freezes, wondering what has woken her. Kakashi's on an A-rank somewhere in Rock (she can't quite remember the details but she knows he's not expected back for at least another week). Indeed, his covers are cold and untouched and the light in their ensuite is off … the only sounds she can hear are the usual ones – the buzzing of the refrigerator, the drip of their kitchen tap and the annoying ticking of one of Sakumo's antique cuckoo clocks. Bisuke, the ninken Kakashi usually leaves behind to 'guard' her, is awake and staring back at her with dewy eyes._

 _Sakura scans the rest of the moon-lit room. She reaches out with her chakra, trying to sense for anything amiss. The seals on her windows and above the door are still activated and shine bright with chakra to her senses. She pushes slightly further out and almost misses them in her 3 AM tiredness._

 _There are two chakra signatures behind the door – but she knows these like the back of her hand, knows them like she knows her own. She frowns and scrambles for her robe, tying it haphazardly as she strides swiftly for the door._

 _Her hand hesitates on the doorknob, a thousand incoherent thoughts battering the insides of her skull._

 _She opens the door._

-OOO-

The rain is warm, like all rain in Fire Country. Tonight, the thick mix of petrichor and ozone pulls a memory close.

It feels like decades ago, but it wasn't so long ago a stupid little girl allowed a stupid little boy to leave her sodden form lying on a wet park bench. It had been like something from myth, little Sakura, the maiden sacrificed to cold stone and a weeping kami in the empty sky. Her mind doesn't flinch from the memory or any of the other hallmarks of mental trauma Sasuke precipitated in the events that followed. (Though, her lips now shape words like 'traitor', 'defector' and 'warmonger' as easily as her comrades.)

But tonight the sky kami pays the debt in full because unlike that first night, instead of taking, it gives. Tonight, the rain is making her precious person immortal. Here, here and here … her eyes skip around the form guarding the memorial stone. Outlined in warm rain, like an ink impression smudged noir...

"Kakashi," she says.

He's standing just like he used to, back when guilt and regret still called him to penance. His head hangs, hair rain-slick, shoulders slumped; his back to the world …

Her pulse jumps in her throat as he lifts his head and she can feel the tips of her fingers tingle. Sakura is a combat medic. Her realm lies in the physical, in the quantifiable, in the objective application of diagnostic criteria. And of course _he'd_ do this. When did Copy-Ninja-Kakashi ever stop achieving the impossible?

"Kakashi," she says. Sakura lifts her arm and steps closer, rubbing at her eyes. She wonders how she will explain her madness, wonders at how easy it is to let her scientific infallibility slip away...

The warm rain filters the world around them, a hushed accompaniment to the bass pulse of blood in her ears. But of course he can't hear her or won't hear her; they both walk in different worlds now.

"This is torture."

Sakura needs him to turn around. She wants to see his face. She wants to feel the smooth material of his mask under her fingers; wants to press her lips below the crease of his mouth on his beauty mark; wants to tease him just like she used to – ask him why such a scary shinobi has such a lovely face; wants to unzip his flak jacket and feel his chakra shiver as she presses her palm to his chest. She wants to see the way he looks at her …

Why?

Why can't she touch him? Why can't she feel him above her, under her, inside her? Why can't she breathe in as he breathes out …?

"Where did you go?" she whispers.

Sakura slowly slumps to the dirt. Her face is wet, but it's raining so that's okay. Her hands are covered in mud but she can't help but touch the stone. Can't help but trace a name. Can't help but think that Ino was right. Ino was _always_ right.

Because it's true …

They don't leave us behind, _we_ leave them behind. Time drags us forward, pushes us into life, into worrying and breathing and bleeding and hating and loving … and _kami_ why won't it stop?

Why won't it stop?

"Will you wait for me, or am I being too selfish?"

And—

Sakura imagines the brush of rain on her cheek as a hand – calloused and scarred and warm. Her breath stutters. She knows how this goes. She can't look. If she looks, he'll be gone. But …

She has to look. And—

He's standing just like he used to, staring down at the memorial stone. And—

… he lifts his head a little … to the side, just enough, just so she can see the warm grey of his eye, the pinch in his mask as he smiles …

The sky kami rumbles, the lightning so bright, that if she'd been looking she thinks she probably could have seen straight to heaven.

She blinks against the light …

… and he's gone.

Sakura sits for a moment. She watches the rain wash the mud from the stone. She tilts her head to the sky, feels the rain on her face, her cheek tingling. She breathes in and out. The memorial stone is cold under her fingertips, speckled clean with rainwater, something entirely incongruous; by all rights it should've been streaming blood.

Her hand trembles as she lifts it to her cheek, her chakra roiling inside her, to do what she has no idea, something undoubtedly ill-advised, something desperate, just to preserve the warmth that lingered there … but then, where would it end really? Would she make a shrine of their bedroom too? Would she buy a mask, start reading _Icha Icha_ in public? How far would she go? If Sakura could make a claim to one thing, it would be that she's always been a brilliant student. She learns her lessons well and Obito was an abject lesson in the lengths people could go in their obsession.

"I'm sorry; I think I understand now …"

Sakura clenches her fists and forces herself to her feet. She stands just like he used to, staring down at the memorial stone.

"I can't follow you there yet," she tells him. "In fact," she says, voice wavering, "I might be a little late—"

She gasps as a gale suddenly lashes the trees around her; the fierce gust whipping her hair forward leaving stinging trails across her face and neck. Her arms move to shield her head, she pauses, half-turning; there's something … softly, in the distance, she can hear something. She can hear something on the wind, a … a keening. The blood quickly drains from her already pale face. Sakura can almost see them, heads thrown back to the sky, the howls of a hundred thousand dog summons rising on the wind, rising at her back.

It's a mourning song, a dirge, a … a declaration to never accept another summoner.

She thinks then of loyalty … of duty.

She thinks of her parents, her shishou, Shizune-neechan. She thinks of the Rookie Nine. She thinks of her patients, she thinks of the little boy she's just admitted for malignant tumour growths. She's his medic-nin; she promised to show him chakra control exercises when he gets better. Who will give him his chakra treatments? Who will make sure someone holds his hand?

She sobs a little, hands covering her face.

"I can't follow you there yet," she tells him again. "You told me …" she chokes, "You told me those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash."

A soft breeze tugs at the ends of her fringe, just like he used to.

She turns slowly, every muscle, every fibre in her being screaming at her to stop, to stay, to never leave. One day, Konoha will etch her name into weeping stone and they will both stand together as guilt and regret and duty and love called them to when their blood still ran warm.

Sakura grits her teeth.

She walks away.

-OOO-

 _Her hand hesitates on the doorknob, a thousand incoherent thoughts battering the insides of her skull._

 _She opens the door._

 _The first thing she notices—strangely—is the fact Tsunade has donned full ceremonial wear; the robes and hat the Third had been so famous for wearing every day he was in office, but her shishou usually despises. The second thing she notices is that Tonton is nowhere in sight; Shizune is empty-handed._

 _This is worrying on so many levels._

 _"Shishou? Nee-chan? It's 3 AM …"_

 _Shizune avoids her eyes, but Tsunade removes the hat and steps forward._

 _"Sakura, can we come in?"_

 _She can't quite put her finger on it, but something about her voice is odd … it's … it's almost as if … It's only when they're all sitting around the kitchen table that she realises that this is the Hokage sitting in front of her, not her shishou._

 _Sakura is suddenly very glad for Bisuke's warm, solid presence against her leg._

 _"Shishou, what's wrong? Is it the council? I thought—"_

 _The older woman raises her hand, takes a deep shuddering breath and looks her straight in the eye._

 _"As Hokage, it is my duty to inform you that your husband, Hatake Kakashi, has been reported dead on the Tsuchi no Kuni border at 23:00 on June 2 …"_

 _Sakura sits for a moment. She breathes in and out. She sees the gleaming wink of a ring on her finger. She blinks. And it's as if everything slows down, seconds turn liquid, her Hokage's voice echoes from somewhere far far away …_

-OOO-

"… And here am I, budding  
among the ruins  
with only sorrow to bite on,  
as if weeping were a seed and I  
the earth's only furrow."

 **–** _Pablo Neruda, "Lightless Suburb"_

-OOO-

A/N:

1\. Adapted from my Day 7 KakaSaku Last Fan Standing 2016 entry. Prompt was 'Warm Rain'.

2\. Had Lisa Gerrard's 'Man on Fire' on repeat for this. Check it out if you're curious. (Might want to grab a box of tissues though.)

3\. This was an attempt at a symbolic interpretation of my current state of mind through prose and a touch of verse, representing the struggle to grieve and process life, after the death of my best friend. ( _Girl, the world is so much colder and scarier without you in it - you gave me courage; I wish I'd told you that.)_

4\. And for all of you out there in the great web also missing someone special; I wanted to share this:

Closure doesn't appear to be an accurate metaphor for the general course of our human bereavements. Instead, "normal" grief can last in some form for a lifetime. But we don't appear as a society to be too keen on the facts when it comes to grieving. Like many therapists, I get a lot of people who come through the door thinking there's something wrong with them because they're feeling the loss of someone who has died, left or disappeared long ago. Often they ask me why they still sometimes cry. Sometimes I ask them to tell me why they think they shouldn't still be sad. And most of the time we come to the conclusion they're in my office so I can somehow put a cork in it for them so they can stop upsetting their families and the rest of the world. Because somehow we still believe that grief is contagious, and that if we're too heavily exposed to the grief of others, we'll catch it. As if sadness were an airborne disease, we avoid exposure by keeping our distance. This is a canny little psychological two-step that allows us to pretend the grieving person in front of us is suffering in a way that we will never be forced to suffer.

— Zoë Krupka

5\. Remember, it's okay to grieve.


End file.
